Byline: Veronica Nicholson

Fine Hall: Barad-dûr, but it’s nice at night. After dinner you and I go to the third floor lounge to study. We look at the pictures of graduate students. 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995. They all have funny hair but we agree that their glasses are stylish and 1991 wore the best jeans. We sit back down to do work but after five minutes we’re restless again in the room with brown carpeting, brown walls, and brown ceilings. “Do you want to check out the top floor?” I ask. We go up and try the door. Locked. We settle for the next floor down, and walk to the corners where we look out of narrow floor-to-ceiling windows. There are seven thousand students on campus but we don’t see anybody. The corner alcoves fit just two people.

Philadelphia, 1962. “Dirty beatnik,” he muttered under his breath. Maurice Povich sat with his roommate on the balcony outside his dorm at the University of Pennsylvania. It was the night before graduation, and Al decided to light up a joint. … Read More

Around sixth or seventh grade I remember discussing religion with a friend. We were in the backseat of her car and her mother, who was driving, politely asked me if I attended any type of Christian services.

I only knew one member of 2 Dickinson Street, the vegetarian co-op also known as 2D, when I signed up for a meal, though I didn’t know him that well. I didn’t know anyone from my year joining next year, as my friends and I had all joined clubs or went independent.

Walking down Nassau Street last Wednesday towards my home on Bank Street, I passed a tall young man wearing short shorts and speaking French to a shorter young man wearing short shorts. The tall man had a red tote bag slung over his shoulder. I had no choice but to follow him.

The word “modest” does not describe a modesty towel very well. I’m standing in a small dressing room with a few old ladies, grasping this flimsy and slightly sheer material, and marveling at the dimensions that barely match the size of a hand towel. I quickly take off my yukata, stuff it into a cubby, and drape the small cloth over the front of my body.

On a map, the penobscot Bay in Downeast Maine looks like shattered glass. Rivers and inlets crack through the rocky coast, carving out hundreds of islands and peninsulas. A favorite of fishermen and vacationers, the Penobscot is the halfway point on the coast between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia.

Marlboro Reds. The choice cigarette of cowboys and cattle ranchers, of healthy corn-fed Westerners with tanned skin and rugged faces who dexterously smoke with their thumb and forefinger. In the October of my senior year in high school, this was … Read More

I found this curious invitation nestled in a medium-sized cardboard box in Mudd Library. A middle-aged man with a likeness to Frank Zappa had wheeled a cart over with this box and three others just like it into the musty reading room where I was conducting my research after hearing that my grandfather, who graduated in 1937, was a part of this group.

Spring Breakers arrived in theaters last Friday only to confuse audiences around the country. The film begins practically pornographically, bare breasts splashed with beer and tan rears occupying the entire movie screen, accompanied by the aggressive sounds of Skrillex. It then flashes forward to the mundane and fictitious Kentucky College where four girls find they don’t have enough money to fund a spring break getaway to Florida.